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Stay Winning

The words echoed through my mind as I stood in the checkout line at a local grocery story this morning. Mighty Mango smoothie by Naked in hand, I glanced at the magazine racks to my right. PEOPLE magazine’s latest cover made me suck my teeth in disgust. Oh poor Paula Deen! I have no sympathy for that woman, nor am I here for her tears and all the attempts to make her into a victim. No, my tears and my sympathy are reserved for the victims of the mentality that Deen represents. PEOPLE’s cover is a classic example of the way White Supremacy is given the benefit of the doubt and treated as a benign force. It is not. The tiny box to the left of Paula on the cover shows how brutal, poisonous and disgusting White Supremacy truly is. I wonder if the folks over at People even realize the irony of juxtaposing George Stinney and Paula Deen. The deaths of Stinney and thousands of other African-Americans in extrajudicial slayings, the inequality of the American justice system and the continued oppression of African-Americans is rooted in the very ideas that Paula Deen was raised with and was caught repeating. Yet she gets sympathy and a chance at rehabilitation. The more things change the more they stay the same. Yes indeed, white supremacy stays winning.